Friday, August 22, 2014

F3 Smoke Rings

They couldn’t
see me, or at least, they gave no indication they saw me. I lay prone on a
low-hanging cloud over the volcano using a pair of binoculars to stare inside.
It had circular caldera, but small, maybe thirty feet across. I had come up
here because I never had a chance to stare into a volcano before. I had come
far too close to one in Iceland, but that was an emergency.

I didn’t
expect to see—but should’ve—two men in the caldera, right next to the lava.
They were naked because of clothing’s combustibility, but their flesh remained
untouched. They were of the Pyro clan, or as we storm riders liked to call
them, hotheads.

And today
they were at the bottom of a volcano practicing their art. They had wielded
fire, jumped into the lava or hurled the molten earth at one another. But now,
their more rigorous exercise complete, they blew smoke rings . . . using the
volcano.

The crater
belched forth another ring into the sky. I could see the air currents that kept
the ring together, the wind circling around the smoke while simultaneously a
current blew through the center in a torus.